👫Loving Someone I’m Afraid of Losing… and Sometimes Afraid of Staying With 👫

There are some battles you fight with other people, and then there are the battles you fight inside yourself.

Loving someone with severe mental illness has become one of mine. 

I love a man who can be one of the sweetest, most caring and loving people I have ever met. There are moments when I look at him and genuinely can't imagine wanting anybody else. He can make me laugh, make me feel protected, make me feel wanted, and make me believe that underneath everything we have something worth fighting for.

But then his mood changes.

Sometimes I don't even know what changed it.

We can go from laughing and loving each other to arguing within what feels like minutes. He can go from affectionate to depressed, from wanting me close to wanting me gone, from wanting sex and intimacy to acting like he can't stand the sight of me. Anger can turn into yelling, insults, emotional and mental abuse, and at times it has become physical.

Then eventually comes the apology.

 The softness comes back.

The man I love comes back.

And that's where this gets so complicated.

Because when someone is horrible to you all of the time, maybe walking away makes sense in your head. But what happens when the same person who hurts you can also be the person who holds you, loves you, worries about you and shows you a completely different side of himself? 

What happens when you know mental illness is involved?
 

What happens when part of you keeps wondering, Is he choosing to hurt me, or is he fighting something inside himself that he doesn't know how to control?

And maybe the hardest question of all:

At what point does understanding someone's mental illness turn into accepting behavior that is destroying you? 

That's the question I don't have an answer to yet.

I find myself constantly questioning what I should do differently. Maybe I shouldn't have responded that way. Maybe I should have recognized his mood changing sooner. Maybe I should have given him space. Maybe I should have stayed closer. Maybe I should have been more patient. Maybe if I learned his triggers better, loved him differently, or figured out exactly what he needs from me, things wouldn't escalate.

But living like that can slowly make you lose yourself.
 

You start monitoring someone's facial expressions, their voice, their movements and their silence. You start wondering which version of the day you're about to get. You can have an amazing morning and still be scared of what the afternoon might bring.

And when the moods can change several times in one day, you never really get the chance to emotionally recover from one before another begins.\

appy.
Loving.
Depressed.
Angry.
Sexual.
Distant.
Furious
Apologetic.

Then loving again.

It's exhausting trying to keep your heart caught up. 

I also struggle with guilt when I think about leaving.

Because I know what it feels like to battle your own mind. I know people need support when they're struggling. So part of me wonders whether leaving would mean I gave up on someone I love when what he really needed was somebody willing to stay, understand him and help him become healthier.

But another part of me asks something I don't always want to hear:
 
How much of myself am I supposed to sacrifice while waiting for someone else to heal?

Love should involve patience. Love should involve forgiveness. Love should mean supporting someone through difficult seasons.
 

But love shouldn't require being afraid.

Mental illness deserves compassion, treatment and understanding. But a diagnosis cannot become permission to verbally tear someone apart, emotionally break them down or physically hurt them.

I can understand that someone is struggling and still acknowledge that what they're doing to me hurts.

Both things can be true.

And maybe that's the part people don't understand when they simply say, "Just leave."

I'm not confused about whether being abused is wrong. I know it's wrong.

I'm conflicted because I love the person behind those moments

I remember every good day. Every laugh. Every conversation. Every apology that sounded sincere. Every time he held me afterward. Every moment when I saw the man I fell in love with and thought, See? He's still in there.

And hope can be an incredibly powerful reason to stay.

But I'm beginning to realize something else: 

I cannot love someone into becoming healthy.
I can support him.
I can encourage treatment.
I can learn about bipolar disorder. 
I can work on the things I need to work on.
I can communicate differently and recognize my own mistakes.
But I cannot control another person's anger, choices or actions.
And loving someone does not make me responsible for saving them.

Maybe my battle right now isn't deciding whether he's a good person or a bad person. Human beings are more complicated than that.

Maybe it's figuring out whether the relationship we're living in is healthy enough for either one of us.

Because I don't want to abandon someone I love.
But I don't want to abandon myself trying to save him either.

I don't have some inspirational ending for this post where I tell you I figured everything out.

I haven't.
I'm still standing somewhere between "fight for us" and "save yourself."
Some days I believe love can get us through this.
Other days I wonder how many pieces of myself I'll have left if I keep trying.

Maybe that's why I'm writing this.

Because The Unspoken Battles was never supposed to be about pretending I have all the answers.

It's about finally saying out loud the things I'm fighting silently.
And right now, this is one of them.

🙇 Where I’ve Been: Finding My Way Back to the Things That Once Made Me Feel Alive 🙇

It’s been a while since I’ve written here.
 

I wish I could say my absence was because life got busy, I lost track of time, or I simply didn’t have anything to write about. The truth is almost the opposite. I’ve had too much to write about, and for a while, I didn’t have it in me to put any of it into words.

Part of my absence was because I was incarcerated. But even after I came home, a different kind of confinement followed me.

Depression.

There was a point where I basically gave up on life without actually saying the words “I give up.” I was still here. I was still waking up every day. I was still going through the motions when I had to. But inside, I stopped caring about so many of the things that once made me me.

Things I used to enjoy stopped feeling enjoyable. Things I used to look forward to felt like work. Dreams I once had started feeling too far away to even think about.

And one of the hardest parts has been being away from my girls.

There really aren’t words big enough to explain what that does to a mother. Every birthday, holiday, milestone, first day of school, random Tuesday, or ordinary moment that passes is another reminder of time I can’t get back.

 Some days I can turn that pain into motivation.

Other days, it feels like that same pain is sitting on my chest asking me why I should even keep trying. 

But somehow, I’m still here.

Maybe not the same version of myself that started this blog. Maybe not as optimistic. Maybe a little more guarded, tired and scarred by things I never imagined I would experience.

But I’m here.

And lately I’ve realized thp at maybe I don’t need to wait until my life is completely put back together before I start living it again.

 Maybe finding myself isn’t going to happen all at once. 

Maybe it starts with something as small as opening this blog and writing again.

 The Unspoken Battles was created for exactly that—the battles people fight that nobody sees. The things we’re ashamed to admit. The moments when “I’m okay” is easier than explaining everything happening underneath it.

 So I’m coming back.

Not because everything is suddenly better. It isn’t. 

Not because I have some inspirational ending to give you. I don’t.
 

I’m coming back because writing used to give me an outlet. It gave my experiences somewhere to go besides staying trapped inside my head. And right now, I need something that belongs to me again. Something that gives me a reason to create, reflect and maybe even connect with somebody else who is fighting their own unspoken battle.

 I’m hoping that writing here regularly again will give me back a little bit of the purpose I feel like I lost.

I want to talk about incarceration. Depression. Motherhood. Missing my children. Relationships. Mistakes. Growth. Starting over. The judgment that follows you after your worst chapters. The days when you're motivated and the days when getting through the day itself feels like an accomplishment.

I don't want this blog to be a highlight reel.
 
I want it to be real.

Because healing isn't always pretty. Growth doesn't happen in a straight line. And sometimes surviving doesn't look inspirational at all.

Sometimes surviving is simply deciding, “I'm going to try again tomorrow.”

So this is me trying again.
 
One post at a time.
 
One day at a time.

And hopefully, somewhere between these words, I’ll start finding pieces of myself again.

If you're reading this while fighting your own battle quietly, maybe we can find our way forward together.

Welcome back to The Unspoken Battles.
 I think I’m finally ready to start talking again.